Jumping and Falling Into Love
by CaramelApple74
Summary: Hermione and Draco had the same plan in mind that night: to end it all. But when fate decides that their time isn't up yet it forces their worlds to collide and nothing's ever the same again. What started out as a seemingly lone jump to the death instead has them landing together in unknown territory and pushing each other's boundaries and buttons to see just how far they can get.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own harry Potter, its characters, nor am I in any way affiliated with anything concerning it. I'm broke and in high school, so please don't sue me. **

The Autumn wind whipped and howled throughout London, causing everyone to head inside and bundle up instead of staying out until some ungodly hour of the morning like they usually would on a Friday night. The air was cold enough to chill a person to the bone if they stood outside for too long. But the sky was clear, void of any clouds or fog so that one could count each and every star that lit it up if they had the time and desire to.

Nobody in their homes was aware of the events about to take place that night. Sure, the wind was bad, but there wasn't any indication of something strange happening, something that in only a matter of weeks would lead up to something else that would change and corrupt a hidden portion of the planet when made public. Nobody knew that fate was at its finest that night to make certain these events happened at a very precise moment in order for everything to work. Not even the two people involved in this event knew what lay ahead.

Atop one of the tallest apartment buildings in London stood a girl, slender and quite young, clad in only a t-shirt, thin jacket, jeans and a pair a sneakers. Her teeth were chattering incessantly, but she tried her best to ignore it and focus on the task she'd set out to complete. She crept closer to the edge of the building, but ceased all movement when the sound of quiet footsteps was heard to her left. Her eyes narrowed and her breath stuttered before she shook the notion of someone being with her from her head and concluded it was just her mind playing tricks and making up noises. Besides, she'd locked the old wooden door leading out to the roof with a complicated spell that only another wizard would be able to break through, and a clever one at that. This was a part of muggle London, so the chances of another wizard being out here were near impossible.

However, the girl didn't know that someone had gotten there before her and was lurking in the shadows, unaware himself that she was on the building's roof, too. He was lost in his thoughts, the ones he had stored in the dark recesses of his mind for as long as he could remember but now dug up. He felt numb, dead to the world and unbelonging. He'd been coming up to the roof every night for the past couple weeks and getting right up to the edge, only to back away at the last second because the timing didn't feel right. But tonight the timing felt perfect. Nothing had ever felt more right to him; it felt like the inevitable end to a dark beginning. He was ready.

Draco Malfoy stepped right to the edge and closed his eyes, soaking up the cool sting of the wind on his face and laughing bitterly when he realized that he'd die alone and cold. Of course he'd long accepted the former of the two already, but the latter was a bit humorous; people always said he was a cold person. Karma was finally getting back at him it appeared.

Hermione Granger also stepped to the edge of the building and shut her eyes, wishing that things didn't have to come to this. Everything she worked so hard for came crumbling down right in front of her in such a short period of time that the whole thing was dizzying. She made her way to the very top only to figure out she didn't belong there, that there was no room for the frizzy-haired know-it-all on the tallest level of success. Everything she'd dreamed about since she was eleven was simply that, a dream. Not reality.

Ron Weasley, Hermione's boyfriend of five years, broke up with her at the beginning of the week after stating that he only dated her for publicity and because everyone expected him to ask her out. He'd also rather rudely admitted he never loved her and only stuck with her for as long as he did because he felt sorry for her. Following the breakup was a falling out with Harry and Ginny. They stuck by Ron's side, claiming that he had a point and adding that Hermione was too boring and prudish for their tastes.

She was fired from her job as head Potioneer at the Ministry earlier that day after an incorrectly brewed Calming Draught took out half the potions lab. It was the last straw for her boss, considering she'd been blowing up potions all week due to lack of concentration. Now Hermione was left without a job, and the meager funds left in her Gringotts account wouldn't be enough to pay for her flat and other bills for very long. Not to mention there was food and various other necessities she had to buy.

Her parents still didn't remember her after she messed the spell up while Obliviating them back in seventh year. The spell wouldn't reverse, and now they still live in Australia, unaware of the fact that they have a daughter living in London about to end her life, wishing more than anything at the moment that she could just hug them tightly and have them tell her everything was going to be alright and they'd help her through this.

That wasn't the case, though. Instead Hermione opened her eyes and peered down the edge of the building at the large drop awaiting her. She smiled faintly one last time, mentally saying her goodbyes to the world, before sucking in a deep breath and stepping off the roof and into the air. Unbeknownst to her, Draco did the very same just twenty feet away.

The sensation was like nothing Hermione or Draco had ever felt before; it was as if they were falling and flying at the same time. The wind swirled around them, and everything was blurred into a mix of bright colors and distorted shapes as the fell at a rapid speed.

Headlines would be all over the Daily Prophet tomorrow morning, reading how the Golden Trio's only Golden Girl along with the son of famous Death Eater Lucius Malfoy committed suicide. Whether or not people would mourn was anyone's guess though since Draco wasn't quite popular anymore and Ron was making Hermione out to be a royal bitch.

Right when the two were roughly half way down the drop, fate chose to intervene. Hermione couldn't explain why, but something told her to glance at her left while the same happened to Draco, but he looked to his right. Their eyes locked immediately and both widened with shock and horror, leaving them wondering what the other was doing jumping off of a building in the dead of night. Hermione noticed that they were getting closer to the bottom and hitting the ground and something clicked in Draco, making him react without really giving much thought to what he was doing. He patted his coat furiously and felt for his wand in one of its pockets, snatching it out the second he located it. He gripped it tightly and muttered two words that would cause both his and Hermione's lives to be turned upside down and never return to normal.

"Arresto Momentum."

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A/N:

I'm back! This story took a long time up update, but now I bring edits and a beg of your forgiveness and promises of weekly, if not multiple times a week, updates.

So first chapter, let me know what you think if you're into that sort of stuff. Click that follow button, or if you want to get really kinky then leave a review... that looks astoundingly awkward typed. And yes, in case you haven't guessed yet, I'm a complete fucking idiot and things get pretty creepy in my author's notes. We'll just leave it at that.

Bye!


	2. Chapter 2

Their descent was automatically slowed by Draco's spell, and he and Hermione had just enough time to adjust themselves in the air so that they landed lightly on the ground. Draco wasn't thinking, not really, he was just reacting to everything on auto-pilot. Once his feet touched the pavement he strode over to Hermione, took her by the arm, and wordlessly made them both disappear with a crack.

He apparated them to the living room of his flat, and while he anticipated the pull of apparition Hermione didn't, and ended up swaying to the side. She would've lost her footing altogether, but Draco steadied her before retracting his arm from hers so fast it as if he'd been burned. He took a step back and noticed for the first time that he and Hermione were breathing hard, adrenaline still coursing through their veins.

They were both silent for a tense few minutes as the reality of what just happened began to really set in. Draco sighed heavily and rubbed his temples in slow, circular motions when he started to feel a headache coming on. He'd not only failed to complete what he'd set out to accomplish, but he saved Hermione Granger, too. Granger. His arch enemy. The bane of his very existence. The mudblood girl he was practically raised to hate. Well, he didn't think of wizards as mudbloods anymore, his prejudices had gone away after the war and he was able to see sense now. But still, he hadn't seen her since the battle at Hogwarts five years ago.

Now she was standing only a few feet away from him with her arms crossed tightly around herself and staring at the wall across from them. She had a far-off look in her eyes that gave away everything and nothing about what she was feeling in that moment at the same time. She looked confused, like she didn't know what was happening or couldn't quite comprehend it. Draco found that strange since she normally had the answers to everything and then some. But mostly, Hermione just looked broken and defeated, there was no other way to put it. Draco figured that he most likely looked the same.

He needed to do something. The silence was stretching on and becoming exceedingly uncomfortable. He needed to start a conversation, make a snarky comment or throw her out or something. No, what he really needed was to reverse time so he could make it that he never stopped them from falling to their deaths and he didn't have to endure this situation right now. But it turned out that he didn't have to do anything, because Hermione suddenly did.

She burst into hysterical tears.

Hermione fell to the floor on her knees, put her head in her hands, and wept. Loudly. Sobs wracked her body and she shook with the intensity of them. Her breath came out in short gasps for air and an ear-splitting wail escaped from her throat. Draco's attention snapped to her immediately and he grimaced in horror, not having a clue of how to handle this in the slightest.

"Granger?" he asked in an unsure voice, taking a tentative step towards the crying girl.

Hermione didn't say anything, just continued to let her tears fall and pool on Draco's imported hardwood floor. She was sure that she looked a mess- hair wild and tangled, eyes red, skin blotchy and clothes rumpled from the jump -but she couldn't find it in herself to care. She almost died that night, and jumping off of that bloody building was the most idiotic thing she'd ever done. Her choice to die was impulsive, a spur-of-the-moment decision that she put almost no serious thought into. But by some miracle she was alive and had been saved, though by the man she used to hate with a passion in school. She had to pinch herself to be sure this wasn't a horrible nightmare, but after she felt the pain she didn't know how to feel about that either.

Draco stood idly by, struggling to think of how to console Hermione or if he should even console her at all. But he had to think of himself too here; she wasn't the only one who nearly died. He felt conflicted, and when Draco felt conflicted there was only one thing that could fix it: copious amounts of alcohol. He was aware that drinking his problems away wasn't the smartest thing to do by far, but it worked, and that was all he cared about.

He turned on his heel and ambled down the hallway until he reached his destination at the end of it, the liquor cabinet. Draco opened the cabinet door and surveyed its contents critically before choosing an unopened bottle of Cognac and making his way back into the living room. He Accioed two glasses from the kitchen and poured a generous amount of the amber liquid into each one.

He walked over to Hermione then and bent down to place one of the glasses in front of her, then sat down on the floor himself and began sipping his drink. "Drink it, Granger."

Hermione ceased her crying long enough to look up at Draco curiously, almost having forgotten he was even there. "What?" she asked, sniffling a couple times.

"Drink it," he said as he pointed to the glass he set down for her, "it'll make you feel better."

Hermione eyed the glass and turned her gaze back to Draco. Her brow furrowed as she tried to understand his random act of kindness. "Why?"

Draco rolled his eyes and waved a hand in annoyance. "Don't ask questions, just take the drink. Merlin knows you could use one."

Hermione glared at him briefly before picking up the glass and sniffing it experimentally. When she deemed it to be safe she took a sip and closed her eyes at the slight cinnamon taste to it, humming in delight. Well, this was Malfoy, of course he had the good stuff. She took another sip and felt warmth spread throughout her body. It was a comforting feeling. Then she noticed that she wasn't crying anymore, her tears drying on her cheeks and only a few sniffles and hiccups escaping her now. Huh, maybe a drink really was all she needed.

"I didn't poison it if that's what you're thinking."

Hermione's eyes flew open and she scoffed. "I had to make sure. This is you who gave it to me."

"If I wanted you dead I would've just let you fall," Draco remarked bluntly, and he and Hermione both visibly cringed at his words.

Draco downed the rest of his drink quickly and poured another one for himself. He averted his gaze to the floor and kept it there, wishing he hadn't been so stupid and instead kept his mouth shut. He wasn't ready to talk about this, it was too soon. He wasn't sure at first why he stopped Hermione and himself from falling, but now it was becoming clear in a sort of warped way. He acted subconsciously, but he was able to control what he was doing to an extent and he'd gone along with it, seizing the moment.

This night would haunt him forever. He showed weakness in front of Hermione by attempting to off himself, and then couldn't even go through with it. If she told anybody then he may as well really find a way to die, because then he'd be ridiculed and there'd be absolutely no way he could live with himself then.

"Why did you do it?" Hermione asked quietly, her eyes trying to connect with his but failing since he was intently staring at the floor.

This was the most surreal thing ever, Hermione decided. She was still in shock about... earlier events, and she was sitting on the floor of Malfoy's living room- which was tastefully decorated with top of the line furniture and complementing colors - and didn't feel the urge to hex him into oblivion. The fiery hate she used to feel for him wasn't there anymore, instead she felt something akin to sympathy and thankfulness. It was all so, so odd.

Draco decided that he didn't have much more to lose, so he told the truth. "I saw an opportunity and took it."

"Would you do it again?"

There was a long pause before Draco responded to that as he mulled over his answer. The conclusion he came to wasn't easy to accept, but he had to do it, had to say the truth because it was honestly one of the only things he had left. He didn't know what would happen once he said it, but it was a risk he had to take.

"I think I would."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at Draco, trying to detect any hint of falseness in his voice but finding none. She shook her head and looked down to find her glass empty. "Could you, um, pass over the Cognac?"

Draco wordlessly slid the bottle over to her. Hermione thanked him and refilled her glass to the very top. She knocked half of it back in a matter of seconds, but choked on her last swallow and coughed violently. Draco finally glanced over at her and raised an eyebrow as she sputtered and tapped on the center of her chest. She repeatedly cleared her throat until she could breath again.

"Sorry, it went down the wrong way," she said in embarrassment, now taking a light sip of her drink and coughing one last time. Draco nodded in half amusement, and then the two lapsed back into silence.

Hermione pursed her lips and stared at Draco, who in turn pretended not to notice her gaze on him. She contemplated whether or not it'd be appropriate to ask him the question burning a hole into her mind, and had yet to come to a decision. Pros and cons of what responses the question would gauge flitted through her mind at rapid speeds. After nearly five minutes of tense silence Draco cracked and turned back to Hermione.

"What is it?" he snapped in irritation.

"Why did you jump?" Hermione asked, figuring she may as well get it out in the open. Draco scoffed.

"I'm too sober to answer that right now. Why did you jump?" Hermione bit her lip and swished the remaining Cognac around in her glass.

"Well, I-"

"That was a rhetorical question, Granger. I don't really want to know."

Hermione sighed and set her glass down on the floor. She stood up and dusted her jeans off even though there wasn't any dust on them because Draco's whole flat was immaculately clean. "I should go."

Draco motioned towards the front door. "You have to go out in the hall for that, you're not authorized to Apparate in or out by yourself." Hermione nodded and walked over to his door, but paused before opening it.

'Thank you."

"You're welcome, Granger."

Hermione froze in the doorway, not because Draco actually responded to her thanks and replied with a courteous comment of his own, but because when she opened the door she noticed something terrifying. "You live in the same building as me?" she choked out. The familiar chocolate colored carpeting and deep purple wallpaper with a gold stripe through the middle of it matched what the outside of her flat looked like. A peek at the number on the door told her that he lived on one of the higher floors, unlike her flat situated on only the third floor. The technicalities didn't matter though.

A glass shattered to pieces behind her, but Hermione didn't look back, just hastily stepped out in the hall, closed the door firmly behind herself, and Apparated back to her flat. She landed unceremoniously in her living room and, for the second time that night, she cried.

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A/N:

Chapter two! Blame it on a-a-a-a-a alcohol...

Just for the record, I don't recommend drinking to solve your problems. Draco just happens to like Cognac, and I've never even drank. I have other addictions to support, like my coffee addiction. I may or may not be full of caffeine right now. It may or may not be coffee with cinnamon vanilla creamer and two teaspoons of sugar. I may or may not have had two cups of it.

Anyways, let me know what you think!

Bye!


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